Charley Patton: Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues (Revenant)

HIS PEERS weren’t exactly trying to flatter him when they called him a rascal, a drunkard, a clown, a squabbler, a glutton, and hustler of women – a guy who in his own words loved "to fuss and fight." But who would want him otherwise? As for his preposterous, incoherent lyrics, when Son House says, "Charley could start out singing of the shoe there and wind up singing about that banana," you wanna shout, Awright! Put like that, we might actually make a case for Patton as a precursor of Aesop Rock.